


Watch the Lights

by Baelkaz



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, I bend some rules but only because Matt Mercer did first, Magic and Science, Some pining and pre-fluff fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 23:52:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19734187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baelkaz/pseuds/Baelkaz
Summary: Caleb has always been a prodigy, and he always thinks too much.Set before CR2 episode 5, The Open Road





	Watch the Lights

The Dancing Lights spell was always looked down upon in the Academy. It was a weak spell and too inconvenient to commit to memory. A wizard could only practice their incantations and gestures for so many hours each day. When a self-respecting magician needs to see in the dark, they cast the Light cantrip. It lasted a full hour, bestowing any object you wanted with a glowing surface as bright as a roaring fire. Dancing Lights had to be recast every minute, and the wizard in question had to concentrate on them the entire 60 seconds. Far too inconvenient to read by their light at night. Dancing Lights were the realm of those with short attention spans and greedy sellswords looking to light up caverns. 

Likewise, it was looked down upon for students to use component pouches. While these miniature dimensional satchels were costly enough for the wealthier students to maintain their stature as elite for having one, it required such dirty work. Scrounging in the mud for glow worms and spiders, keeping dust and sand and guano and birdseed on your person at all times… it was so plebeian. Almost every single student at the Solstryce Academy had a wand, a staff, a ring of power, a pendant or crystal or  _ something _ .

Bren Aldric Ermundrud did not. Bren did not even own a component pouch at first, keeping his supply of insects, animal parts, and loose garbage in his pockets. He had several extra ones sewn onto his trousers, but wore a long black cloak to cover the shame of his homemade sorting system. That cloak was probably the only thing he owned worth more than a silver piece.

Bren did not come from a wealthy family, but he was studious enough to make up for it. More than that, he was proud of what he had done and could do. Dancing Lights was the first spell he had learnt, and it was what had gotten him recognized to enter the Academy. People scoffed at that story. Astrid did. Wulf did too. Dancing Lights was a child’s play, simple enough to learn from any introductory spellbook, and hardly worth the effort of even opening the chapter. But Bren hadn’t learnt it from a spellbook, a textbook, a mentor, or otherwise. He had created it from scratch, reinventing a spell with no tutelage and no supervision.

He was proud.

* * *

“So how does this work again, Caleb?” Nott asked, the glow worm crawling across her small green hand in a desperate bid for freedom. “Why can’t I just kill it?”

Caleb sighed. He had been trying to teach her the principles of his Dancing Lights for almost an hour. 

“You could kill the worm, yes, and it would still work, but there are subtle differences. The three main schools of thought on Dancing Lights is that you can cast it with a glow worm, a piece of witchwood, or a chunk of phosphorus. Each way has a different effect on the globules, but it is minor. The worm being alive is like that too. Also it is much easier to feed a worm once a day than go looking for worms all the time because it decomposed in your pocket.”

There was a soft giggle off to Caleb’s right, but he did his best to ignore it. Jester had been eavesdropping on his lesson for nearly as long as it had been going on, continually making fun of his teaching methods and frankly brilliant analogies, even if Nott sometimes did not understand them. He cleared his throat, turned away, and focused on the goblin in front of him.

“So, erm, anyway,” he said, “As I was saying. The different material components can have different effects. Using a glow worm makes the lights glow a bit more like a bio-luminescence, and they move around much more smoothly. If the glow worm is dead, the lights are actually the dullest of the options. If you use phosphorus, the light is extremely bright, and it’s movements are, er…zippy.” He paused to wince as Jester giggled again behind him.

“But phosphorus explodes sometimes so I do not like to have it out if I don’t have to. The witchwood is the third option, and it is the easiest to use, albeit the hardest to find. Witchwood trees are hard to come by and usually pieces do not sell cheap. But phosphorus is volatile and glow worms are living creatures, so witchwood is the simplest material to hold your concentration. The others…fight back, so to speak.”

Nott was enraptured, her big eyes staring up at him, the glow worm forgotten as it crawled its way up her forearm.

“So which one do you use, Caleb?” she asked.

He felt a familiar surge of pride swell in him before mercilessly smacking it back down. Bren’s failures would not be Caleb’s, and nor would his accomplishments.

“I er…I actually invented my own way. It is nothing, and I have not seen anyone be able to replicate it anyway.” He braced himself for Jester’s mocking laugh to sound again from over his shoulder, but heard nothing. Maybe she had gotten bored and went to bed, he thought. He wouldn’t turn around to check. He didn’t care. He didn’t.

He extended his arms and allowed the sleeves of his coat to slide back. With his right palm held over top of his left, the thumb and fourth finger of his left hand met and then released, snapping uncomfortably. He whispered under his breath, and a spark jumped between his fingers, igniting into a blaze like his firebolts, blackening his bandages and scorching his fingers. He quickly inverted his hands and turned both clockwise, like making the motion to unscrew a jar, hissing out the next part of his incantation. 

The flame hovering between his hands grew brighter and smaller, compressing into a ball of shining radiance that no longer gave off any heat. Caleb smiled despite himself, and then in a motion like he was dealing cards, swept his free hand across the palm holding the globule of light, sending a half dozen orbs flying away from him that lost momentum and hung in the air as they shot away.

“I use fire as the material component," he says, as Nott looked around at the hovering orbs of light.

“Aren’t you only supposed to be able to make four of those?” Jester’s voice rose up from behind him. 

“I changed the spell," he mumbles, expecting more ridicule. 

Since he had joined up with this group last week, Jester had not missed a single opportunity to call him smelly, dismiss his habits leftover from poverty, and laugh at his long-winded explanations. He knew she did not mean it to be cruel, but her ignorance was quite rude anyway. It didn’t help that she was beautiful and funny. Or that he was beginning to look forward to her laughing at him just so he could hear it again. Just another torture he had devised to punish his old self, surely, falling for such a girl. Regardless, he fully expected her to say something about how rewriting spell formulae was—

“That’s so cool, Caleb! Can you show me?” she chirped.

“I, erm—uh… what?”

“How to change my spells around like that, you know? There are some cool things the Traveler has been telling me I can try out, but I was wondering if you know how to make them more awesome!” Jester grinned at him. “Not that the Traveler’s spells aren’t awesome, y’know?” She looked away and said towards the sky, “It’s just that he’s been telling me all these rules about how the magic works ‘for my own safety’ or something and that’s so unlike him, you know? He usually hates rules.”

She closed the distance between them and leaned forward to whisper in his ear. 

“I think this is a test, actually, to see if you guys are cool enough to hang out with him.” She rocked backwards onto her heels. “So you can totally help me break some of his rules and then he’ll really like you!”

Caleb stared at her wide eyed. She was less than a foot from him, her face turned upwards with a wide beaming smile. He really hoped that he wasn’t blushing. He had definitely lost concentration on the lights he had going. 

“Could you do that?” Nott said from his other side. “Her magic is different, right? Can you even—”

“Yeah, Cayleb, could you?” Jester interrupted, her eyes shining with glee.

He swallowed. “Possibly. You get your magic from…a god, yes?”

She nodded. “He’s like my best friend but he’s also a pretty cool god too, yep!”

“Well…if you show your god what you want a spell to look like, then that should help, ja?” He took a step backwards, rubbing his chin. “Like showing a seamstress a sketch of a dress you’d like to have sewn. You could get all sorts more details than simply describing it.”

Jester nodded thoughtfully. “That’s really smart, Cayleb. I’m a really good artist too, y’know. So how do I sketch my spell? Is it like this?” She dug into her bag for a moment and retrieved a thin green notebook. She flicked through the pages and then spun it around into his face. Scribbled onto the page at the bottom of what seemed to be a diary entry was a cartoon of a blue woman, likely Jester, slamming an oversized lollipop into a large frog that was probably Kylre. 

He reached forward to take the notebook and her arms retracted quickly, snatching the book away. “There’s, um…some private stuff in here.” she said, hugging it to her chest. “But you saw the big lollipop, right? I think it’d be reeeaaally cute but also like  _ super  _ powerful.” She mimed swinging a giant lollipop downwards. 

He nodded his head dumbly, trying to wrap his mind around the strange circumstances. She was being rather nice to him, actually. She seemed to value his opinion on the very thing she’d been laughing about for days. Perhaps he could reciprocate this kindness without it feeling like the usual torture. 

“C-certainly, Jester,” he stumbled. “How do you normally cast this spell? Show me.”

She smiled and nodded, taking a few steps back as well. Her eyes closed and he saw her lips moving slightly, and then she snapped her fingers and extended her arm outwards, her hand wrapping around the shaft of a battleaxe that was materializing in midair. The metal glowed with a radiant sheen in striped red and green, and the air around it seemed to have an audible low frequency buzzing sound as it thrummed in her grasp. Caleb could tell immediately that he did not want to be struck by that weapon. 

“Erm…right. Wow. So, ok. Ja. That is very impressive.”

“Thanks, Cayyyleb!” She gushed. “Ooh! It can do this too!” Taking her hands off it, she snapped her wrist towards him and appeared to will the battleaxe to float forward on its own. 

“Very interesting!” he yelled, scrambling back away from it. Jester’s giggles filled the air again. Well fine. If she was determined to taunt him, at least he got the pleasure of hearing her laugh. He regained his footing and looped around the floating red and green axe the long way.

“I did not see you use your holy symbol or any components. Does this just require prayer and your hand motions?”

She nodded. He did as well, pensively rubbing his chin once more. 

“Altering your somatic—er, your gestures—can often change the effect of your spell, but it’s easiest to alter the materials used.” While he spoke, Caleb fished in his pockets. From the one sewn to the inside of his right shoulder, he withdrew several crushed berries and fruits. “Here, watch.”

He repeated the same gestures for his Dancing Lights, this time holding the berries in his palm. The light he summoned was a pure white in his fist, and as he fanned it out among the clearing, each globule of light took on a different color of the rainbow. One matched the exact red of the raspberry he had held, another the same shade of green as the sprig of mint. The blue globule that matched his burned blueberry floated its way over to Jester and did a small figure eight in the air around her horns. Jester looked transfixed at the sight, her starry-eyed expression taking in the lights moving in soothing patterns all around them. 

“Caleb, this is amazing!” She whispered. “You changed the spell to do this  _ yourself??”  _

He was definitely blushing now, and moved several of the lights away from his own face and towards her, doing tricks with them that he used to do to entertain the younger students. Orbs of vibrant pink and rich purple danced in orbit around Jester, and she appeared to be doing her best not to squeal in delight. 

“It’s not something I usually take credit for," he said. “But I think I can help you create your lollipop.”

He wasn’t prepared for her to leap forward out of his dancing lights and tackle him in a hug. He froze up as her arms wrapped around him. It had been a very very long time since this had happened to him and, emotional turmoil aside, he wasn’t sure how to respond. His arms still hung stiffly at his sides. 

“Oh, thank you, Cayleb!” She drew out his name, smiling widely. “You’re so smart about this stuff, and you make it so easy to learn!” She pulled her arms back from around him and grimaced a bit. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have just gone and hugged you like that, although you  _ did  _ look like you needed it.” 

She took a tentative step backwards, away from him.

“Y'know, you’re really funny too. I always laugh at your jokes when you’re teaching Nott. I thought I could pick up some pointers in my  _ ‘dry wit,’” _ she says, her voice dropping low in a bad imitation of his accent at those words, “But instead I’m actually learning stuff! It’s really cool.”

He stared at her. She had been…laughing at his joke‍s? He didn’t think he had been telling jokes, but if she did…

“Jester…you mean you’ve not been…making fun of me for this?”

Her eyes blew wide and her smile dropped into a gasp. 

“Ohmygosh, I—Caleb, no! No, not at  _ all!  _ I— ohmygosh I am so sorry, is that why you’ve—oh no, jeez, I’m so sorry, Cayleb.” 

The realization that she legitimately liked spending time learning his interests crept slowly across Caleb’s mind, a grin just as slowly accompanying it across his face as Jester stammered out her apology. 

It would always be torture to be with her, knowing that Bren didn’t deserve a second chance like that. But maybe Caleb could. 

“Jester," he interrupted her. A red and a blue orb of dancing light flew forward from behind his shoulders and began circling them overhead. He stretched his hand forward as an offer. 

“Let’s watch the lights.” 

From forty feet away, sitting back at camp completely forgotten in her lesson, Nott watched them walk hand in hand further from camp, multicolored lights dancing around them. Jester had a spring in her step, and it looked like Caleb was different too. She watched as he reached up and swatted a yellow light out of the air at Jester, and their laughs rang out across the clearing as both of them began tossing lights like ammunition, and she realized what was different about him.

Caleb was walking with pride. 

**Author's Note:**

> For Widojest Week Day 1: Dance
> 
> I know this is only very loosely "dance" but hey the lights do it. And dodgeball can sort of be a dance. To the right people.
> 
> Thank you to elsinorerose and shaypotter for beta-ing for me, and to bonesout and ladyofpurple for their undying love and support of me, their tireless cult leader.


End file.
